New Fiction - Satiating the Darkness

[Doomdog]

Here's this week's story update.

Remember the cool art on Rite of Profane Abstersion? This week we find out what's going on with Nic and the Furies!

[Harlath]

Cheers, would have missed this for a few days as I check the forum more regularly than Alderac's page.

An enjoyable, lively piece.

SPOILERS

Pleased to see another fatality.

Good to see Shane and Grave in action together.

[Tredain]

Very cool Some great action. Poor Rafi >>

[Harlath]

Noticed some heat over on Facebook for the Law Dog fatality rate - given the rate at which new dudes are printed I think several deaths in an end of arc blowout helps keep threats credible and at least provides for "A Death in the Limelight" - far better to appear in a story and die tragically than never to appear at all. It's not like the Law Dogs are losing significant story characters in a "cheap" fashion - it's generally lower value/cheaper dudes who haven't had much story (Tommy Harden, Andrew Burton, Erik Samson), or people like Rafi who've had some story already. The former category of relatively cheap dudes even applies outside the Law Dogs - much better that Jack O'Hara perish dramatically than he do nothing at all.

Perhaps some of this is allied to frustration at the Law Dogs struggling in the card game? Fourth Ring probably has a few deaths coming soon too. Can sympathise with frustrations over weakness in the card game, but it is clear the design team were aware of this. It sadly takes time to address these issues in an LCG - time it turns out we didn't have.

Being the thin blue line is dangerous! Well done for the story team for making it so. I'm not on Facebook, but wanted to chip in my two pennies worth (cents? slivers of ghost rock?)/

[Tredain]

Well, I think it's also just natural that the Law Dogs are going to have the most casualties, being the main 'hero' faction they're the ones most likely to selflessly put themselves in the thick of things to protect the town. The Eagle Wardens have higher ideals, what with the whole 'save the world MO', but they're also seen as outsiders and camped outside of town so they're not in the line of fire as the Dogs are. Likewise, the bandits are more about pushing their robin hood MO, so while they're do gooders in their own way, its less in the direct 'restore law and order and stop the bad guys' kind of way (or rather, their definition of bad guys is a bit different than the Law Dogs, eldritch horrors notwithstanding)

I mean, anyone that was around for Classic or at least has read up the sets knows that Good Guys basically have a giant red target on their backs in the Weird West.

[Doomdog]

The Law Dogs are the only 'good guy' faction that's been heavily involved in the circus story arc, and also the one whose job it is to keep order in the town, so it makes sense that they'll suffer most of the casualties. The 108 have barely featured at all in fictions. Other than their introduction and a couple of standalone dude preview pieces, I think all we've seen is Xui Yin Chen's appearance in a story focused on Lucy and Sloane. The Wardens have been more involved than the Bandits but nowhere near to the extent of the Law Dogs. I imagine that the two newer factions will get more of a focus in the next story arc (especially as it looks like we'll be short on Law Dogs dudes by the end of this one) but sadly it doesn't look like we'll be seeing much of that beyond BMR.